St. Paul, the Apostle

St. Paul, the Apostle, original name Saul of Tarsus, (born 4 bce?, Tarsus in Cilicia [now in Turkey]—died c. 62–64 ce, Rome [Italy]), one of the leaders of the first generation of Christians, often considered to be the most important person after Jesus in the history of Christianity. In his own day, although he was a major figure within the very small Christian movement, he also had many enemies and detractors, and his contemporaries probably did not accord him as much respect as they gave Peter and James. Paul was compelled to struggle, therefore, to establish his own worth and authority. His surviving letters, however, have had enormous influence on subsequent Christianity and secure his place as one of the greatest religious leaders of all time.

Top Questions

What influences did St. Paul have on Christianity?

St. Paul is often considered to be the most important person after Jesus in the history of Christianity. His epistles (letters) have had enormous influence on Christian theology, especially on the relationship between God the Father and Jesus, and on the mystical human relationship with the divine. In addition to his extensive theological contributions, St. Paul played a crucial role in the development of Christianity away from its Jewish parent. Although he held that Jews and Gentiles alike were called to be transformed into one new humanity in Christ, his missions were largely focused on the conversion of Gentiles, and Christianity would eventually become a largely Gentile religion.

How did St. Paul the Apostle die?

The exact details of St. Paul’s death are unknown, but tradition holds that he was beheaded in Rome and thus died as a martyr for his faith. His death was perhaps part of the executions of Christians ordered by the Roman emperor Nero following the great fire in the city in 64 CE. It is known that St. Paul was imprisoned in Rome and wrote several of his epistles (letters) during his captivity there.

Sources

Of the 27 books in the New Testament, 13 are attributed to Paul, and approximately half of another, Acts of the Apostles, deals with Paul’s life and works. Thus, about half of the New Testament stems from Paul and the people whom he influenced. Only 7 of the 13 letters, however, can be accepted as being entirely authentic (dictated by Paul himself). The others come from followers writing in his name, who often used material from his surviving letters and who may have had access to letters written by Paul that no longer survive. Although frequently useful, the information in Acts is secondhand, and it is sometimes in direct conflict with the letters. The seven undoubted letters constitute the best source of information on Paul’s life and especially his thought; in the order in which they appear in the New Testament, they are Romans, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians, and Philemon. The probable chronological order (leaving aside Philemon, which cannot be dated) is 1 Thessalonians, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, and Romans. Letters considered “Deutero-Pauline” (probably written by Paul’s followers after his death) are Ephesians, Colossians, and 2 Thessalonians; 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus are “Trito-Pauline” (probably written by members of the Pauline school a generation after his death).

Life

Paul was a Greek-speaking Jew from Asia Minor. His birthplace, Tarsus, was a major city in eastern Cilicia, a region that had been made part of the Roman province of Syria by the time of Paul’s adulthood. Two of the main cities of Syria, Damascus and Antioch, played a prominent part in his life and letters. Although the exact date of his birth is unknown, he was active as a missionary in the 40s and 50s of the 1st century ce. From this it may be inferred that he was born about the same time as Jesus (c. 4 bce) or a little later. He was converted to faith in Jesus Christ about 33 ce, and he died, probably in Rome, circa 62–64 ce.

In his childhood and youth, Paul learned how to “work with [his] own hands” (1 Corinthians 4:12). His trade, tent making, which he continued to practice after his conversion to Christianity, helps to explain important aspects of his apostleship. He could travel with a few leather-working tools and set up shop anywhere. It is doubtful that his family was wealthy or aristocratic, but, since he found it noteworthy that he sometimes worked with his own hands, it may be assumed that he was not a common labourer. His letters are written in Koine, or “common” Greek, rather than in the elegant literary Greek of his wealthy contemporary the Jewish philosopher Philo Judaeus of Alexandria, and this too argues against the view that Paul was an aristocrat. Moreover, he knew how to dictate, and he could write with his own hand in large letters (Galatians 6:11), though not in the small, neat letters of the professional scribe.

Until about the midpoint of his life, Paul was a member of the Pharisees, a religious party that emerged during the later Second Temple period. What little is known about Paul the Pharisee reflects the character of the Pharisaic movement. Pharisees believed in life after death, which was one of Paul’s deepest convictions. They accepted nonbiblical “traditions” as being about as important as the written Bible; Paul refers to his expertise in “traditions” (Galatians 1:14). Pharisees were very careful students of the Hebrew Bible, and Paul was able to quote extensively from the Greek translation. (It was fairly easy for a bright, ambitious young boy to memorize the Bible, and it would have been very difficult and expensive for Paul as an adult to carry around dozens of bulky scrolls.) By his own account, Paul was the best Jew and the best Pharisee of his generation (Philippians 3:4–6; Galatians 1:13–14), as later he claimed to be the best apostle of Christ (2 Corinthians 11:22–3; 1 Corinthians 15:9–10)—though he attributed his excellence to the grace of God.

Paul spent much of the first half of his life persecuting the nascent Christian movement, an activity to which he refers several times. Paul’s motivations are unknown, but they seem not to have been connected to his Pharisaism. The chief persecutors of the Christian movement in Jerusalem were the high priest and his associates, who were Sadducees (if they belonged to one of the parties), and Acts depicts the leading Pharisee, Gamaliel, as defending the Christians (Acts 5:34). It is possible that Paul believed that Jewish converts to the new movement were not sufficiently observant of the Jewish law, that Jewish converts mingled too freely with Gentile (non-Jewish) converts, thus associating themselves with idolatrous practices, or that the notion of a crucified messiah was objectionable. The young Paul certainly would have rejected the view that Jesus had been raised after his death—not because he doubted resurrection as such but because he would not have believed that God chose to favour Jesus by raising him before the time of the Judgment of the world.

Whatever his reasons, Paul’s persecutions probably involved traveling from synagogue to synagogue and urging the punishment of Jews who accepted Jesus as the messiah. Disobedient members of synagogues were punished by some form of ostracism or by light flogging, which Paul himself later suffered at least five times (2 Corinthians 11:24), though he does not say when or where. According to Acts, Paul began his persecutions in Jerusalem, a view at odds with his assertion that he did not know any of the Jerusalem followers of Christ until well after his own conversion (Galatians 1:4–17).

Paul was on his way to Damascus when he had a vision that changed his life: according to Galatians 1:16, God revealed his Son to him. More specifically, Paul states that he saw the Lord (1 Corinthians 9:1), though Acts claims that near Damascus he saw a blinding bright light. Following this revelation, which convinced Paul that God had indeed chosen Jesus to be the promised messiah, he went into Arabia—probably Coele-Syria, west of Damascus (Galatians 1:17). He then returned to Damascus, and three years later he went to Jerusalem to become acquainted with the leading apostles there. After this meeting he began his famous missions to the west, preaching first in his native Syria and Cilicia (Galatians 1:17–24). During the next 20 years or so (c. mid-30s to mid-50s), he established several churches in Asia Minor and at least three in Europe, including the church at Corinth.

During the course of his missions, Paul realized that his preaching to Gentiles was creating difficulties for the Christians in Jerusalem, who thought that Gentiles must become Jewish in order to join the Christian movement. To settle the issue, Paul returned to Jerusalem and struck a deal. It was agreed that Peter would be the principal apostle to Jews and Paul the principal apostle to Gentiles. Paul would not have to change his message, but he would take up a collection for the Jerusalem church, which was in need of financial support (Galatians 2:1–10; 2 Corinthians 8–9; Romans 15:16–17, 25–26), though Paul’s Gentile churches were hardly well off. In Romans 15:16–17 Paul seems to interpret the “offering of the Gentiles” symbolically, suggesting that it is the prophesied Gentile pilgrimage to the Temple of Jerusalem, with their wealth in their hands (e.g., Isaiah 60:1–6). It is also obvious that Paul and the Jerusalem apostles made a political bargain not to interfere in each other’s spheres. The “circumcision faction” of the Jerusalem apostles (Galatians 2:12–13), which argued that converts should undergo circumcision as a sign of accepting the covenant between God and Abraham, later broke this agreement by preaching to the Gentile converts both in Antioch (Galatians 2:12) and Galatia and insisting that they be circumcised, leading to some of Paul’s strongest invective (Galatians 1:7–9; 3:1; 5:2–12; 6:12–13).

In the late 50s Paul returned to Jerusalem with the money he had raised and a few of his Gentile converts. There he was arrested for taking a Gentile too far into the Temple precincts, and, after a series of trials, he was sent to Rome. Later Christian tradition favours the view that he was executed there (1 Clement 5:1–7), perhaps as part of the executions of Christians ordered by the Roman emperor Nero following the great fire in the city in 64 ce.

Paul believed that his vision proved that Jesus lived in heaven, that Jesus was the Messiah and God’s Son, and that he would soon return. Moreover, Paul thought that the purpose of this revelation was his own appointment to preach among the Gentiles (Galatians 1:16). By the time of his last extant letter, Romans, he could clearly describe his own place in God’s plan. The Hebrew prophets, he wrote, had predicted that in “days to come” God would restore the tribes of Israel and that the Gentiles would then turn to worship the one true God. Paul maintained that his place in this scheme was to win the Gentiles, both Greeks and “barbarians”—the common term for non-Greeks at the time (Romans 1:14). “Inasmuch then as I am an apostle to the Gentiles, I glorify my ministry in order to make my own people jealous, and thus save some of them” (Romans 11:13–14). In two other places in Romans 11—verses 25–26 (“the full number of the Gentiles [will] come in” and thus “all Israel will be saved”) and 30–31 (“by the mercy shown to you, they too may now receive mercy”)—Paul asserts that he would save some of Israel indirectly, through jealousy, and that Jews would be brought to Christ because of the successful Gentile mission. Thus, Paul’s view reversed the traditional understanding of God’s plan, according to which Israel would be restored before the Gentiles were converted. Whereas Peter, James, and John, the chief apostles to the circumcised (Galatians 2:6–10), had been relatively unsuccessful, God had led Paul through Asia Minor and Greece “in triumph” and had used him to spread “the fragrance that comes from knowing him [God]” (2 Corinthians 2:14). Since in Paul’s view God’s plan could not be frustrated, he concluded that it would work in reverse sequence—first the Gentiles, then the Jews.

St. Paul preaching the gospel, detail of a 12th-century mosaic; in the Palatine Chapel of the Royal Palace, Palermo, Sicily.Alinari/Art Resource, New York

Paul’s technique for winning Gentiles is uncertain, but one possibility is that he delivered lectures in public gathering places (Acts 17:17 ff.). There is, however, another possibility. Paul conceded that he was not an eloquent speaker (2 Corinthians 10:10; 11:6). Moreover, he had to spend much, possibly most, of his time working to support himself. As a tent maker, he worked with leather, and leatherwork is not noisy. While he worked, therefore, he could have talked, and once he was found to have something interesting to say, people would have dropped by from time to time to listen. It is very probable that Paul spread the gospel in this way.

Travels and letters

During the first two centuries of the Roman Empire, travel was safer than it would be again until the suppression of pirates in the 19th century. Paul and his companions sometimes traveled by ship, but much of the time they walked, probably beside a donkey carrying tools, clothes, and perhaps some scrolls. Occasionally they had plenty, but often they were hungry, ill-clad, and cold (Philippians 4:11–12; 2 Corinthians 11:27), and at times they had to rely on the charity of their converts.

Paul wanted to keep pressing west and therefore only occasionally had the opportunity to revisit his churches. He tried to keep up his converts’ spirits, answer their questions, and resolve their problems by letter and by sending one or more of his assistants (especially Timothy and Titus). Paul’s letters reveal a remarkable human being: dedicated, compassionate, emotional, sometimes harsh and angry, clever and quick-witted, supple in argumentation, and above all possessing a soaring, passionate commitment to God, Jesus Christ, and his own mission. Fortunately, after his death one of his followers collected some of the letters, edited them very slightly, and published them. They constitute one of history’s most remarkable personal contributions to religious thought and practice.

Despite Paul’s intemperate outburst in 1 Corinthians—“women should be silent in the churches” (14:34–36)—women played a large part in his missionary endeavour. Chloe was an important member of the church in Corinth (1 Corinthians 1:11), and Phoebe was a “deacon” and a “benefactor” of Paul and others (Romans 16:1–2). Romans 16 names eight other women active in the Christian movement, including Junia (“prominent among the apostles”), Mary (“who has worked very hard among you”), and Julia. Women were frequently among the major supporters of new religious movements, and Christianity was no exception.

Although in his own view Paul was the true and authoritative apostle to the Gentiles, chosen for the task from his mother’s womb (Galatians 1:15–16; 2:7–8; Romans 11:13–14), he was only one of several missionaries spawned by the early Christian movement. Some of the other Christian workers must have been quite important; indeed, an unknown minister of Christ established the church at Rome before Paul arrived in the city. Paul treated some of these possible competitors—such as Prisca, Aquila, Junia, and Andronicus—in a very friendly manner (Romans 16: 3, 7), while he looked on others with suspicion or hostility. He was especially wary of Apollos, a Christian missionary known to the Corinthians (1 Corinthians 3:1–22), and he vilified competitors in Corinth as false apostles and ministers of Satan (2 Corinthians 11). He called down God’s curse on competing preachers in Galatia (Galatians 1:6–9) and asserted that some of the Christians in Jerusalem were “false brothers” (Galatians 2:4; compare 2 Corinthians 11:26). Only in the latter two cases, however, is the nature of the disagreement known: Paul’s competitors opposed his admitting Gentiles to the Christian movement without requiring them to become Jewish. The polemical sections of Paul’s letters have been used in Christian controversies ever since.

In the surviving letters, Paul often recalls what he said during his founding visits. He preached the death, resurrection, and lordship of Jesus Christ, and he proclaimed that faith in Jesus guarantees a share in his life. Writing to the Galatians, he reminded them “it was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly exhibited as crucified” (Galatians 3:1), and writing to the Corinthians he recalled that he had known nothing among them “except Jesus Christ, and him crucified” (1 Corinthians 2:2). According to Paul, Jesus’ death was not a defeat but was for the believers’ benefit. In accord with ancient sacrificial theology, Jesus’ death substituted for that of others and thereby freed believers from sin and guilt (Romans 3:23–25). A second interpretation of Christ’s death appears in Galatians and Romans: those who are baptized into Christ are baptized into his death, and thus they escape the power of sin (e.g., Romans 6). In the first case, Jesus died so that the believers’ sins will be purged. In the second, he died so that the believers may die with him and consequently live with him. These two ideas obviously coincide (see belowChristology).

The resurrection of Christ was also of primary importance, as Paul revealed in his Letter to the Thessalonians, the earliest surviving account of conversion to the Christian movement. Written to Thessalonica in Macedonia possibly as early as 41 ce and no later than 51—thus no more than 20 years after Jesus’ death—the letter states (1 Thessalonians 1:9–10),

For the people of those regions report about us what kind of welcome we had among you, and how you turned to God from idols, to serve a living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead—Jesus, who rescues us from the wrath that is coming.

Since Jesus was raised and still lives, he could return to rescue believers at the time of the Final Judgment. The resurrection is connected to the third major emphasis, the promise of salvation to believers. Paul taught that those who died in Christ would be raised when he returned, while those still alive would be “caught up in the clouds together with them to meet the Lord in the air” (1 Thessalonians 4:14–18).

These and many other passages reveal the essence of the Christian message: (1) God sent his Son; (2) the Son was crucified and resurrected for the benefit of humanity; (3) the Son would soon return; and (4) those who belonged to the Son would live with him forever. Paul’s gospel, like those of others, also included (5) the admonition to live by the highest moral standard: “May your spirit and soul and body be kept sound and blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Thessalonians 5:23). See belowMoral teachings.

Although Paul may have converted some Jews, his mission was directed toward the Gentiles, who therefore constituted the vast majority of his converts. The letters sometimes explicitly state that Paul’s converts had been polytheists or idolaters: the Thessalonians had “turned to God from idols” (1 Thessalonians 1:9), and at least some of the Corinthians wished to be allowed to continue to participate in idolatrous worship (1 Corinthians 8, 10). (Scholars have referred to Gentile religions in the ancient Mediterranean world as “paganism,” “polytheism,” and “idolatry”; these terms are frequently used interchangeably.) Pagan religion was very tolerant: the gods of foreign traditions were accepted as long as they were added to the gods worshipped locally. Civic loyalty, however, included participation in public worship of the local gods. Jews had the privilege of worshipping only the God of Israel, but everyone else was expected to conform to local customs.

Paul and other missionaries to Gentiles were subject to criticism, abuse, and punishment for drawing people away from pagan cults. Although he showed some flexibility on eating food that had been offered to an idol (1 Corinthians 10:23–30), Paul, a monotheistic Jew, was completely opposed to worship of the idol by eating and drinking in the confines of a pagan temple (1 Corinthians 10:21–22). Thus, his converts had to give up public worship of the local gods. Moreover, since Paul’s converts did not become Jewish, they were, in general opinion, nothing: neither Jew nor pagan. Religiously, they could identify only with one another, and frequently they must have wavered because of their isolation from well-established and popular activities. It was especially difficult for them to refrain from public festivities, since parades, feasts (including free red meat), theatrical performances, and athletic competitions were all connected to pagan religious traditions.

This social isolation of the early converts intensified their need to have rewarding spiritual experiences within the Christian communities, and Paul attempted to respond to this need. Although they had to wait with patience and endure suffering (1 Thessalonians 1:6; 2:14; 3:4), and although salvation from the pains of this life lay in the future (5:6–11), in the present, Paul said, his followers could rejoice in spiritual gifts, such as healing, prophesying, and speaking in tongues (1 Corinthians 12–14). In fact, Paul saw Christians as beginning to be transformed even before the coming resurrection: the new person was beginning to replace the old (2 Corinthians 3:8; 4:16).

Although he placed his converts in a situation that was often uncomfortable, Paul did not ask them to believe many things that would be conceptually difficult. The belief that there was only one true God had a place within pagan philosophy, if not pagan religion, and was intellectually satisfying. By the 1st century, many pagans found Greek mythology lacking in intellectual and moral content, and replacing it with the Hebrew Bible was therefore not especially difficult. The belief that God sent his Son agreed with the widespread view that gods could produce human offspring. The activities of the Holy Spirit in their lives corresponded to the common view that spiritual forces control nature and events.

The teaching of the resurrection of the body, however, was difficult for pagans to embrace, despite the fact that life after death was generally accepted. Pagans who believed in the immortality of the soul maintained that the soul escaped at death; the body, they knew, decayed. To meet this problem, Paul proclaimed that the resurrection body would be a “spiritual body,” not “flesh and blood” (1 Corinthians 15:42–55); see belowThe return of the Lord and the resurrection of the dead.

Moral teachings

Although Paul recognized the possibility that after death he would be punished for minor faults (1 Corinthians 4:4), he regarded himself as living an almost perfect life (Philippians 3:6), and he demanded the same perfection of his converts. Paul wanted them to be “blameless,” “innocent,” and “without blemish” when the Lord returned (1 Thessalonians 3:13; 4:3–7; 5:23; Philippians 1:10; 2:15; Romans 16:19). Paul regarded suffering and premature death as punishment for those who sinned (1 Corinthians 5:5; 11:29–32) but did not believe that punishment of the sinning Christian meant damnation or eternal destruction. He thought that those who believed in Christ became one person with him and that this union was not broken by ordinary transgression. Paul did regard it as possible, however, for people to lose or completely betray their faith in Christ and thus lose membership in his body, which presumably would lead to destruction at the Judgment (Romans 11:22; 1 Corinthians 3:16–17; 2 Corinthians 11:13–15).

Paul’s moral standards coincided with the strictest view of Jewish communities in the Greek-speaking Diaspora (the dispersal of the Jews from their traditional homeland). Paul, like his Jewish contemporaries the scholar and historian Flavius Josephus and the philosopher Philo Judaeus, completely opposed a long list of sexual practices: prostitution and the use of prostitutes (1 Corinthians 6:15–20), homosexual activities (1 Corinthians 6:9; Romans 1:26–27), sexual relations before marriage (1 Corinthians 7:8–9), and marriage merely for the sake of gratifying physical desire (1 Thessalonians 4:4–5). However, he urged married partners to continue to have sexual relations except during times set aside for prayer (1 Corinthians 7:3–7). These ascetic views were not unknown in Greek philosophy, but they were standard in Greek-speaking Jewish communities, and it is probable that Paul acquired them in his youth. Some pagan philosophers, meanwhile, were more inclined than Paul to limit sexual desire and pleasure. For example, the Stoic philosopher Musonius Rufus (flourished 1st century ce) wished to restrict marital sexual relations to the production of offspring.

Some aspects of Jewish sexual ethics were not generally accepted among the Gentiles to whom Paul preached. Sexual behaviour, therefore, became a substantial issue between him and his converts, and for that reason his letters frequently refer to sexual ethics. His other moral views were as simple and straightforward to ancient readers as to modern: no murder, no theft, and so on. To all of these issues he brought his own expectation of perfection, which his converts often found difficult to satisfy.

Paul’s opposition to homosexual activity (1 Corinthians 6:9; Romans 1:26–27) and divorce were generally in keeping with Jewish sexual ethics. Male homosexual activity is condemned in the Hebrew Bible in Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13—teachings that Christianity followed, thanks in part to Paul, even as it disregarded most of the laws of Leviticus. Jesus’ prohibition of divorce, along with his view that remarriage after divorce, if the first spouse is still living, is adultery (Mark 10:2–12; Matthew 19:3–9), set him apart from most other Jews and Gentiles. Paul accepted the prohibition but made an exception in the case of Christians who were married to non-Christians (1 Corinthians 7:10–16). The consequence has been that, in some forms of Christianity, the only ground for divorce is adultery by the other partner. Until the 20th century the laws of many state and national governments reflected this view.

Two distinctive aspects of Paul’s moral teachings have been very influential in the history of Christianity and thus in the history of the Western world. The first is his preference for total celibacy: “It is well for a man not to touch a woman” (1 Corinthians 7:1). This view may have been a personal matter for Paul (7:6–7), and it was an opinion that he did not attempt to enforce on his churches. He was motivated in part by the belief that time was short: it would be good if people devoted themselves entirely to God during the brief interval before the Lord returned (7:29–35). Paul’s preference for celibacy, in combination with Jesus’ praise of those who do not marry (Matthew 19:10–12), helped to establish in Western Christianity a two-tiered system of morality that persisted unchallenged until the Protestant Reformation. The top tier consisted of those who were entirely celibate (such as, at different times in the history of the church, monks, nuns, and priests). Married Christians could aspire only to the bottom, inferior tier. Although celibacy was practiced by a small Gentile ascetic movement and by a few small Jewish groups—mainstream Judaism did not promote celibacy, because of the biblical mandate, “Be fruitful and multiply” (Genesis 1:28)—it was the passages from Paul and Matthew that made celibacy a major issue in Western and especially Christian history.

Paul’s second distinctive and long-lasting admonition concerns obedience to secular rulers. In his letter to the Romans 13:2–7, he asserted that “whoever resists authority resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment” (13:2). In later centuries this passage was used to support the doctrine of the divine right of kings, which maintained that royal power came from God, and gave biblical authority to the church’s teaching of submission to rulers, no matter how unjust they were. Few Christians were willing to stray from Romans 13 until the 18th century, when the Founding Fathers of the United States decided to follow the Enlightenment philosopher John Locke rather than Paul on the question of revolt against unjust rulers.

Theological views

Paul, like other Jews, was a monotheist who believed that the God of Israel was the only true God. But he also believed that the universe had multiple levels and was filled with spiritual beings. Paul’s universe included regions below the earth (Philippians 2:10); “the third heaven” or “Paradise” (2 Corinthians 12:1–4); and beings he called angels, principalities, rulers, powers, and demons (Romans 8:38; 1 Corinthians 15:24). He also recognized the leader of the forces of evil, whom he called both “Satan” (1 Corinthians 5:5; 7:5) and “the god of this world” (2 Corinthians 4:4). He declared in 1 Corinthians 8:5 that “there are many gods and many lords” (though he meant “so-called gods”), and in Romans 6–7 he treated sin as a personified or semipersonified power. Despite all this, Paul believed, at the right time the God of Israel will send his Son to defeat the powers of darkness (1 Corinthians 15:24–26; Philippians 2:9–11).

Originally, Jesus had only one name, “Jesus”; he was referred to as “Jesus from Nazareth” (Matthew 21:11), “Joseph’s son” (Luke 4:22), or “Jesus son of Joseph from Nazareth” (John 1:45) when greater precision was necessary. During his lifetime his disciples may have begun to think of him as the Messiah (“Christ” in Greek translation), the anointed one who would restore the fortunes of Israel. After his death and resurrection, his followers regularly referred to him as the Messiah (Acts 2:36: “God made him both Lord and Messiah”). At some point, his adherents also began to refer to him as “Son of God.” Paul employed both “Christ” and “Son of God” freely, and he is also responsible for the widespread use of “Christ” as if it were Jesus’ name rather than his title. Paul sometimes shows knowledge that “the Christ” was a title, not a name, but more commonly he referred to Jesus as “Jesus Christ,” “Christ Jesus,” or even “Christ,” as in Romans 6:4: “Christ was raised from the dead.” In all these cases, “Christ” is used as if it were part of Jesus’ name.

Various Jewish groups, however, expected different kings or messiahs or even none at all, and these titles therefore did not have precise meanings when the Christians started using them. “Son of God” in the Hebrew Bible is used metaphorically (God is the father, human beings are his children), and this usage continued in postbiblical Jewish literature. The Jewish people in general could be called “sons of God,” and the singular “son of God” could be applied to individuals who were especially close to God. Since neither “messiah” nor “son of God” automatically conveys a specific meaning, the significance of these terms must be determined by studying how each author uses them.

What Paul meant by “Christ” and “Son of God” cannot be known with certainty. He seems not to have defined the person of Jesus metaphysically (for example, that he was half human and half divine). In Philippians 2:6–11 Paul states that Christ Jesus was preexistent and came to earth: he “emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness.” This sounds as if Jesus was a heavenly being who only appeared to be human. In Romans 1:1–6, however, Paul writes that God declared Jesus to be “Son of God” by raising him from the dead. This sounds as if Jesus was a human being who was “adopted.” Although both views—that Jesus was not really human and that he was not really divine—would have a long life in Christianity, the church decided by the middle of the 5th century that Jesus was both entirely divine and entirely human. This solution, however, seems not to have been in Paul’s mind, and it took centuries of debate to evolve.

Paul’s thought concerning Jesus’ work—as opposed to Jesus’ person—is much clearer. God, according to Paul, sent Jesus to save the entire world. As noted above, Paul paid special attention to Jesus’ death and resurrection. His death, in the first place, was a sacrifice of atonement for the sins of everyone. Early Christians, influenced by the ancient theory that one death could serve as a substitute for others, believed that Jesus died on the cross so that believers would escape eternal destruction. For Paul, however, Jesus’ death allowed believers to escape not only the consequences of transgression but also the power of sin that leads to transgression. The believer was baptized “into Christ,” becoming “one” with him (Galatians 3:27–28). This meant that through Christ’s death, the baptized believer has mystically or metaphorically died and thus died to the power of sin that reigned in the world (Romans 6:3–4). Death with Christ gave “newness of life” in the present and guaranteed being raised with him in the future (6:4–5). Christ’s death, then, defeated sin in both senses: his blood brought atonement for transgression, and his death allowed those who were “united with him” to escape the power of sin.

The physical universe also needed to be freed from “bondage to decay.” The fact that individual believers could escape from sin did not free the entire world. When the time was right, God would send Christ back to save the cosmos by defeating all the remaining forces of sin and to liberate all of creation. Once Christ defeated all of his enemies, including death, he would turn creation over to God, so that God would be “all in all” (1 Corinthians 15:20–28; Romans 8:18–25). In this grand vision of the redemption of the created order, Paul shows how deeply he believed in one God, maker of heaven and earth, and in the cosmic importance of his Son, Jesus Christ.

According to Paul, all humans, no matter how hard they try, are enslaved by sin (Romans 7:14–21). The strength of sin’s power explains why the traditional Jewish view, that transgression should be followed by repentance and that repentance results in forgiveness, plays a very small role in Paul’s letters. In the seven undisputed letters, the word “forgiveness” does not appear, “forgive” appears six times (Romans 4:7; 2 Corinthians 2:5–10), and “repent” and “repentance” appear only three times (Romans 2:4; 2 Corinthians 7:9–10). Mere repentance is not enough to permit escape from the overwhelming power of sin. The escape, rather, requires being “buried with” Christ through baptism.

While “buried with” and being “baptized into” are the most graphic terms describing the individual’s escape from sin, the most common word for this conversion is “faith”—that is, faith in Christ. The language of faith is ubiquitous in Paul’s letters and has a great range of meaning. The verb “to put one’s faith in” or “to believe” (the same Greek word, pisteuein, may be translated both ways) appears 49 times in the undisputed letters, while the noun “faith” (or “belief”) appears 93 times. Occasionally the verb means “to believe that” something is true (Romans 10:9: “believe in your heart that God raised [Christ]”), but in 1 Thessalonians it means “steadfastness.” Paul feared that the Thessalonians were wavering under persecution, and so he sent Timothy to strengthen their faith. Timothy reported back that their faith was strong (1 Thessalonians 3:1–13). Most frequently, however, the verb means “to put one’s entire confidence and trust in Christ,” as in Galatians 2:20: “the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God.”

In Galatians and Romans the phrase “be justified by faith in Christ, not by doing the works of the law” is used to oppose the view of some Christian missionaries that Paul’s Gentile converts should become Jewish by accepting circumcision and Jewish law. Circumcision was the sign of the covenant between God and Abraham, the first of the Hebrew patriarchs, and it was traditionally required of all Gentiles who wished to worship the God of Israel. Thus, Paul’s rivals held that his converts were not yet among the people of God. Paul’s view, however, was that his Gentile converts could join the people of God in the last days without becoming Jewish, and he argued vociferously that faith in Christ was the only requirement for Gentiles. This is the meaning of “justification” or “righteousness” by faith, not by law, in Galatians and Romans. (“Righteousness” and “justification” translate the same Greek word, dikaiosynē.)

In later Christianity it was sometimes supposed that “works of the law” are “good deeds” and that Paul thus set faith in opposition to good works. This is not the meaning of the debate about “works of the law” in Paul’s letters, however. He was entirely in favour of good deeds, as the emphasis on perfect behaviour shows, and he did not regard good works as being opposed to “faith.” On the contrary, faith produced good deeds as “fruit of the Spirit” (Galatians 5:22). The question was whether his Gentile converts would have to accept those parts of the Jewish law that separated Jew from Gentile. Paul opposed making these aspects of the law mandatory for his Gentile converts.

In Galatians and Romans the language of “righteousness by faith” yields to the language of being in Christ. Thus, Galatians 3:24–28: “Therefore the law was our disciplinarian until Christ came, so that we might be justified by faith”; “in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith”; those baptized into Christ have “clothed yourselves with Christ”; and the conclusion, “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one [person] in Christ Jesus.” “Righteousness by faith” is not actually something different from being baptized into Christ and becoming one person with him. Paul employed the language of righteousness and faith when he was using the story of Abraham to argue that circumcision was no longer necessary. The language that was more natural to him when he wished to describe the believer’s transfer from the power of sin to the power of Christ, however, was dying with Christ, being baptized into him, and becoming one person with him.

Paul regarded his converts not only as individuals who had been freed from sin but also as organic members of the collective body of Christ. The idea of the body of Christ probably also explains why, in his view, it is difficult to sin so badly as to lose one’s place in the people of God. Only the worst forms of denial of Christ can remove an organic member from the body of Christ.

The body of Christ is also important in Paul’s discussions of behaviour. A part of the body of Christ, for example, should not be joined to a prostitute (1 Corinthians 6:15). Since those who partake of the Lord’s Supper participate in the body and blood of Christ, they cannot also participate in the meat and drink at an idol’s table (1 Corinthians 10:14–22). Besides avoiding the deeds of the flesh, members of the body of Christ receive love as their greatest spiritual gift (1 Corinthians 13).

Those who are in Christ will be transformed into a spiritual body like Christ’s when he returns, but they are already being “transformed” and “renewed” (2 Corinthians 3:18; 4:16); the “life of Jesus” is already being made visible in their mortal flesh (4:11). Paul thought that membership in the body of Christ really changed people, so that they would live accordingly. He thought that his converts were dead to sin and alive to God and that conduct flowed naturally from people, varying according to who they really were. Those who are under sin naturally commit sins—“those who are in the flesh cannot please God” (Romans 8:8)—but those who are in Christ produce “the fruit of the Spirit” (Galatians 5:22; compare Philippians 1:11; Romans 8:2–11).

This absolutist ethical view—those in Christ are to be morally perfect; those not in Christ are extremely sinful—was not always true in practice, and Paul was often alarmed and offended when he discovered that the behaviour of his converts was not what he expected. It was in this context that he predicted suffering and even death or postmortem punishment for transgressions (1 Corinthians 11:30–32; 3:15; 5:4–5). Paul’s passionate extremism, however, was doubtless often attractive and persuasive. He made people believe that they could really change for the better, and this must often have happened.

Paul’s central convictions made it difficult for him to explain the proper role of Jewish law in the life of his converts. Paul believed that the God of Israel was the one true God, who had redeemed the Israelites from bondage in Egypt, given the Israelites the law, and sent his Son to save the entire world. Although Paul accepted Jewish behaviour as correct, he thought that Gentiles did not have to become Jewish in order to participate in salvation. These views are not easily reconciled. If the one true God is the God of Israel, should not one obey all the commandments in the Bible, such as those regarding the Sabbath, circumcision, and diet? If “love your neighbour as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18, quoted in Galatians 5:14 and Romans 13:9) is valid, why not the rest of the commandments in Leviticus 19? Paul reconciles Jewish law with Christian faith by using Jesus’ words “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another” (John 13:34). He states that this single commandment is a fulfillment of the entire Jewish law (Galatians 5:14). He was sure that his Gentile converts were not obliged to accept circumcision and many other parts of the law. In his surviving letters, however, he does not work out a principle that would require his converts to observe some but not all of the Jewish law. It is noteworthy that he did not regard Sabbath observance—which is one of the Ten Commandments—as obligatory (Romans 14:5; Galatians 4:10–11).

One point is especially difficult. Paul maintained that the law is part of the world of sin and the flesh, to which the Christian dies. But how could the law, which was given by the good God, be allied with sin and the flesh? Paul, having nearly reached the point of equating the law with the powers of evil (Romans 7:1–6), promptly retracts the equation (Romans 7:7–25). What led him to make it in the first place was probably his absolutism. For Paul, everything not immediately useful for salvation is worthless; what is worthless is not on the side of the good; therefore, it is allied with the bad. However, he does maintain that the Jewish law is sacred and that the commandments are righteous and good (Romans 7:12). He continues to say that his mind desires to obey God’s law, while his flesh makes him “a slave to the law of sin” (Romans 7:21–25).

In the Gospels, Jesus prophesies the coming of “the Son of Man,” who will come on the clouds and whose angels will separate the good from the bad (e.g., Mark 13; Matthew 24). Paul accepted this view, but he believed, probably along with other followers of Jesus, that the enigmatic figure, the Son of Man, was Jesus himself: Jesus, who had been raised to heaven, would return. This view appears in 1 Thessalonians 4, which proclaims that when the Lord (Jesus) returns, the dead in Christ will be raised, and they, with the surviving members of the body of Christ, will greet the Lord in the air.

In the Endtime vision of 1 Thessalonians 4, Paul indicates that he thinks that some people will die before the Lord returns but that many (“we who are alive, who are left”) will not have died. In this passage he does not specify what will be raised, but the implication is corpses. As noted above, this belief was difficult for Paul’s pagan converts to accept, and Paul attempted to overcome their reluctance by emphasizing that the resurrection body would be changed into a “spiritual body” (1 Corinthians 15:42–54). A second problem was the delay: Christ did not immediately return, and the idea that believers would have to remain in the ground until he came was troubling. Paul responded to this by stating that the transformation to a Christ-like spiritual body was already beginning (2 Corinthians 3:18). He also, however, seems sometimes to have accepted the Greek view that the soul would be detached from the body at death and go immediately to be with the Lord; at death believers will be “away from the body and at home with the Lord” (2 Corinthians 5:8). He restated this view when imprisonment forced him to think that he himself might die before the Lord returned (Philippians 1:21–24). Eventually Christianity would systemize these passages: the soul escapes at death and joins the Lord; when the Lord returns, bodies will be raised and reunited with souls.

As is usually the case with people who predict the future, Paul’s expectations have not yet been fulfilled. His letters, however, continue to reassure Christian believers that eventually the Lord will return, the dead will be raised, and the forces of evil will be defeated.

Achievement and influence

Although other early Christian missionaries converted Gentiles, and the Christian movement even without Paul probably would have broken away from its Jewish parent, Paul played a crucial role in those developments and accordingly is regarded as the second founder of the Christian movement. His mission to convert Gentiles helped to achieve the separation of the Christian movement from Judaism, but that was not his intention, and the causes of the breach went well beyond his apostleship. It should be emphasized that he sought to create a new humanity in Christ, including all Jews and all Gentiles. Most Jews, however, did not join the movement, which became largely a Gentile religion.

Paul’s greatest impact on Christian history comes from his letters, which are the most influential books of the New Testament after the Gospels. The Christological statements in his letters have been particularly important in the development of Christian theology. Although they do not form a complete system, they show a powerful mind grappling with the question of how to express the relationship between Jesus the Christ and God the Father. Paul’s letters inspired Christian thinkers for the next several centuries to attempt to find a satisfactory explanation of that relationship. In the letters, Paul also developed powerful expressions of the human relationship to the divine in his ideas of faith as total commitment to Christ, of Christians as constituting the mystical (or metaphorical) body of Christ, and of baptism as becoming one person with Christ and sharing his death so as to share his life. On this crucial question of religion, Paul and the author of the Gospel of John are the two great geniuses of the early Christian period.

Paul’s view that the law of the Hebrew Bible is not entirely binding on Gentile converts gives biblical sanction to the selectivity practiced by subsequent Christianity. As discussed above, Paul rejected some Jewish law but accepted Jewish teachings on monotheism and homosexual activity, and he regarded the Sabbath law as optional. The latter view has generally been taken to mean that Christians are free from strict observance of the Sabbath law, even though it is included among the Ten Commandments. Most Christian churches have transferred aspects of biblical Sabbath laws to Sunday, and some, such as the Puritans, kept their Sunday “Sabbath” fairly strictly. The Christian world in general, however, has observed a weekly day of rest without regarding it as absolutely essential and without requiring all the restrictions of the Jewish law.

Paul’s letters have been especially important at times of controversy among Christians. Paul was a master debater and polemicist, though the ancient Jewish modes of argumentation he used make him difficult for modern readers to understand. It has proved to be fairly simple for Christian leaders to identify their opponents with Paul’s and to use his invective and argumentation against them. Martin Luther, who used Paul’s arguments against the circumcision party to oppose Roman Catholicism, is the most famous of many examples.

Paul’s letters are vital and persuasive partly because they reveal powerful aspects of his personality, especially his passion and dedication. After noting that he had suffered for Christ’s sake in order to gain Christ, Paul declared (Philippians 3:10–11),

I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead.

In his last extant letter he summarized both his total commitment and his complete confidence in God and Christ (Romans 8:31–39):

If God is for us, who is against us?…Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?…No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life,…nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

The reader of his letters will be convinced that such passages are true to the man himself, who endured suffering and privation and finally died for his cause. The example of commitment, as well as the willingness to suffer and die if need be, were widely imitated in early Christianity and helped it to survive and flourish despite periods of persecution. Profound passion and total dedication constitute part of the enduring legacy of Paul’s life and letters.